S Morden - One Way

“Now.” Alice brandished the syringe in a way that indicated she’d stick it in him if he didn’t do as he was told.

He took a deep breath and snaked his arms around Marcy, taking in as much of the blanket as he could. The bodysuit was so thin it was barely there, and her skin was cool to the touch. She jerked away from him, but that could have just been her uncontrolled shaking. He held her quaking body tight, his head against hers, and could see Alice line up her shot.

“OK. Let go now.”

Frank released his grip and backed away, as much as the small compartment would allow him. Marcy shuddered for a few seconds more, then quietened. She pulled the rustling blanket tighter and looked about her.

“What was that?”

“Atropine. Should have had an auto-injector, but no.” Alice looked down at her computer tablet, dabbing her fingers rapidly across the screen. “You are… stable.”

“You can tell, just like that?”

“I’ve got your vital signs right here, in real time. So yes. Just like that. If you want a second opinion, be my guest. Nearest other doctor is a hundred million miles that way.” She pointed out the top of the capsule, back up into space.

Frank reached for his food bar and managed to work it in two. He held out one half to Marcy. “This is what passes as something to eat. Alice’ll find you some water. Then we need to talk. Things haven’t quite gone to plan.”

“This is not what I thought it’d be like.” Marcy lifted the bar to her mouth and dabbed at it with her tongue. “I’ve had worse. And at least it’s not ramen.”

Alice closed up her screen. “Brack’s told me jack so far. So if it’s not some stupid security thing, I’d like to know why I’m not waking the whole crew up.”

“We should give Marcy a moment,” said Frank.

“I’m not made of glass. I won’t break.” Marcy took the water Alice proffered her and coughed each time she took a sip. “Tell us.”

Frank shrugged. He looked down at the metal grille floor. He could just about make Brack out between the gaps. “The supply cylinders aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Some are eighty miles out from where we are. Which isn’t so bad, if you consider how far they’ve come, but we don’t have any transport. So we—you and me, Marcy—have to walk fifteen miles and hope that the manifest is right and that’s the one with the buggies in.”

“And if it’s not, or they’re broken?”

“We’ll probably have enough left in the suits to make it back.”

“There’s nothing we can use that we might have, you know, brought with us?”

“Brack says not. Everything we need to make the base is scattered across the desert. Everything we need to live is out there too. All the machines that make air, water, power, food. I don’t know who’s to blame for this, but that doesn’t really matter now. We’re here, and we have to fix it.”

“When do we have to go?” she asked.

“As soon as we can,” said Frank. “I don’t even know what the time is now, but I guess this is a daylight thing.”

“You’re going nowhere today,” said Alice. “You’re my patients until I discharge you as fit for duty.” She raised her voice. “You hear that, Brack? Tomorrow will be soon enough.”

They all listened for a reply. None came.

“Can you do that? Can you overrule him?” asked Frank.

“I don’t give a shit what he thinks. What’s important is what you do,” she said. “If he tells you to do something stupid or dangerous, you can just say no. Just because we’ve got less gravity doesn’t mean you can do without your backbone.”

[transcript of audio file #10206 12/19/2036 2147MT Xenosystems Operations, Room 62B, Tower of Light, Denver CO]

DV: We can, with current technology, routinely achieve Mars surface landing at eighty-five (85) per cent success.

BT: So you’re saying we need to budget for fifteen (15) per cent wastage.

DV: At least. There are other factors, including that we cannot predict which elements of the cargo are going to be lost. We can probably afford to lose a couple of hab sections, simply by sending more than we need. A single RTG costs half a billion (500,000,000) US. We lose that, the mission is over. If we send two, then we’re spending twice what we need to to ensure one makes it to the surface. And you’d need to order it five years before launch in order for it to be ready on time.

BT: What are our options?

DV: We can drive our success rate upwards with existing technologies at a cost, and with new technologies which may be initially expensive in R and D, but eventually lower unit cost. Something might come along in the next few years that turns out to be a game-changer. But we can’t bank on that, and integrating whatever it is into our existing program will inevitably introduce delays. Landing on Mars will never be easy, but with inflatable heat-shields and retro-rockets, we can get to the eighty-five per cent mark reliably. What we would normally not do is put all our eggs in one basket: by dividing the mission-critical loads across several separate containers, we ensure that at least some of all of them survive the E/D/L phase.

BT: But that won’t sit well with the automatic building program.

DV: It complicates it. Simply put, whatever we send, however we send it, we might not be able to use it. If we plan for total redundancy, we increase our costs by around half. If we send just enough, not enough will survive to complete the contract. Somewhere between the two is probably where you want to draw the line. Too far or too little along that line will bankrupt XO. It’s your call.

BT: Merry fucking Christmas. Come on, Deepak, what can you offer me?

DV: Well, if you’re coming at it from the left field, we’ve some non-mission-rated landers that are as dumb as rocks, but they get the job done. They more or less get to the surface in one piece, at the expense of accuracy, which is why they’re not mission-rated. If I was in charge, I’d look into bringing those back on line. Once your cargo’s down, getting it into position is an easier problem to solve than replacing whole cargoes.

BT: My desk, tomorrow. Got that?

[transcript ends]

The ship airlock was only large enough for just one person at a time. Frank volunteered to go first, and Marcy had argued with him. They settled the matter with rock-paper-scissors, and he’d lost in a two-out-of-three.

His spacesuit—he’d keep calling it that, rather than an SES, because it was a goddamn spacesuit—was either identical to the one he’d trained in, or it was the actual suit. It fitted around him a little too well: the lower pressure was bloating his whole body, though Alice assured him that would sort itself out in a few days.

He waited at the inner door, looking through the small pane of double-glazed plastic into the airlock beyond. Marcy’s back unit, containing both her life support and her entry hatch, swayed as she moved, resting on one leg then the other as the air was pumped out around her.

“I still got green lights,” she said in Frank’s ear. He heard the echo of it in the cabin behind him. Alice was looking at a screen of vital signs, and Brack? Brack was just standing there, that same faint smirk on his face.

Frank didn’t know why. The situation, assuming that Brack was telling him the truth, and there was no good reason to disbelieve him, was immediately serious and long-term catastrophic. Everything they needed to live was spread miles away across the Martian desert and unless they could recover a substantial portion of it—there being very little built-in redundancy—they were all going to die.

They’d die without air, they’d die without food, they’d die without water. The amount of power they’d use would eventually defeat their generation capacity, deplete the batteries and they’d freeze to death. The solar panels they needed to connect up were somewhere out there, as was the thermoelectric generator that was going to provide their base load. Even going out of the airlock was wasting air: the pumps could only recover so much, and the rest had to be vented into the emptiness of Mars. Replacing that ate into the reserves.